Mercedes-amg GT C
More agreeable grand tourer
Markus Hof bauer, Mercedesamg’s chassis team leader – who used to work at Porsche – says he prefers a 911 Turbo to a 911 GT3, which tells you more than a little about the Mercedesamg GT range.
It’s in the way the 911 Turbo goes about things, see; and Hof bauer knows, because he helped engineer 911 dynamics before he moved to AMG. You don’t have to be absolutely ‘on it’ all the time to make decent progress in a Turbo. It’s fast, but secure and unflappable.
Which brings us to the car Hof bauer is here to talk about today: the Mercedes-amg GT, which has, conveniently for the purposes of this article, become available in C specification as a coupé, almost completing the two-door GT range.
A quick recap. The GT is the second 100% AMG sports car, following on from the SLS. It’s a two-seat coupé and roadster, with an engine in the front and drive to the back, where sits a seven-speed dual-clutch transaxle.
You can have a GT as a coupé and roadster in base form, in which case it has 496bhp; or you can have it in S form, which adds an electronically controlled limitedslip differential in place of a purely mechanical one and has 515bhp – although that comes as a coupé only.
Then there’s the C, which we’ve tried in roadster form before but has now arrived as a coupé, too – initially in 500 examples of ‘Edition 50’ trim only, priced at £137,140. However, once those have run out, it’ll be £12k cheaper for no great loss. It has 550bhp.
Finally, there’s the R, AMG’S answer to a 911 GT3 (or Turbo), if you like, only not limited in production, making 576bhp and
available as a coupé only. AMG could make a roadster but probably won’t. At least, Hof bauer would prefer they didn’t but knows that, given the GT C has the same chassis settings in coupé and roadster form, they wouldn’t have to ask for his help to tune an R roadster anyway.
Which just leaves the S model looking oddly unfinished, because it’s the only standard variant unavailable as a roadster. Will one arrive? Perhaps. I think AMG looks at the gradual roll-out of Porsche models, and the publicity that comes with them, a little enviously. So there might be a few more words on it here in a few months.
But back to that 911 comparison. The AMG GT range, across these six models, is now, like 911s, meant to offer something broadly rather appealing: a base roadster for boulevardiers, up to an R for track enthusiasts, albeit all off of fundamentally the same 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 and gearbox.
There are some alterations inside as you move up the GT range. The R will offer you harnesses, for example, while the base models get the softer furnishings, but fundamentally there’s not so much between them. Just a cabin that looks and feels well finished, with the full gamut of Mercedes’ entertainment and info systems, laid out pleasingly.
There are perhaps a few too many buttons on that big transmission tunnel, which, combined with the letterbox view out over a long bonnet, makes the GT feel quite the muscle car, in its way: you sit near the back, overlooking the lengthy nose.
It’s a welcoming, soothing, evocative interior, albeit one that’ll be cramped for taller drivers; mysteriously, because this is a big car. I suppose it’s because it’s mostly aluminium. The Jaguar F-type, similar in layout, isn’t immune from the same thing.
The C sits closer to the top than the bottom of the GT range. It gets wide bodywork like the R, essential for enclosing the wider rear track, which comes from wider wheels rather than any fundamental suspension alterations. And like the R, there is active rear steering (see separate story, top right) and a great deal of, for want of a better word, ‘stonk’.
Once, that was the most part of what AMGS had. Lots of shove in a straight line, and only a little finesse in corners. AMG was a maker of German hot rods. Today, that’s less the case, thankfully. Oh, there is still plenty of straight-line speed, you understand, and noise and grunt. Don’t think there isn’t. AMG’S move to turbocharged engines hasn’t come at the expense of sound. Prod and poke at the buttons above the propshaft until you hit on the ones that put the engine into its most responsive mode and the exhaust its most laissez-faire one, and it’ll growl like good ol’ American iron under acceleration and bang like a firework display’s finale on the overrun.
And that would be very amusing
It’ll growl like good ol’ American iron and bang like a firework display’s finale